Medical Update

Rosie has been a very busy bee this past month.  She has had appointments with her visiting nurse, visiting physical therapist, visiting occupational therapist, orthopaedic surgeon, audiologist, and pediatrician.  She has  been putting on weight steadily.  Last week she weighed in at 6lbs 8oz!  Mommy's big girl :)

We are working with Rosalie's physical therapist on her muscle tone and general strength.  This involves massage, tummy time, side-lying time, etc.  Her occupational therapist is also helping us with those things, but also with tracking movement with her eyes and drinking.

This is one of Rosie's many PT exercises.

These are Rosie's art cards.  We use them to help her learn to focus on images and track movement with her eyes!

At Rosalie's appointment with her orthopaedic surgeon, they did an ultrasound of her hips.  The point of the ultrasound is to see how her acetabulum (the cup in her pelvis) is forming around her femoral head (thigh bone).  If her acetabulum is not forming correctly, it puts her at a high risk for dislocation, which is not a good thing!  At this point, her hips are not bad enough to require the Pavlik harness and we are to continue with double diapering.  We have another ultrasound and appointment scheduled for July to monitor her progress.  I am hopeful that we can continue to avoid the Pavlik harness!

Today, Rosalie had an auditory brainstem response (AKA fancy hearing test) to follow-up on her failed newborn hearing screen.  Finding out whether or not she can hear is very important because hearing plays a huge role in learning to communicate.  If she can't hear, it will be much more difficult for her to learn how to speak.  In order to prepare her for the appointment, I was instructed to not feed her for 4 hours prior to her appointment and to bring her in sleepy.  The goal was to do the test with her asleep.  I set my alarm for 4:30AM and fed her.  I woke up the little princess again at 7:30AM and packed her up in the car to go to her 8:30AM appointment.  The car ride to her appointment was not pleasant.  Poor, sweet girl was hungry!  When we arrived at the office, she quieted down and was well behaved in the waiting room.  When the doctor took us to the exam room, I was finally able to feed her!  She was ravenous and then very sleepy.  We put 4 electrodes on her head and put these little headphones in her ears while she slept in my arms.  The test took about 1.5-2 hours.  From what I understand, it involves playing sounds in her ears and then measuring her brain response.  We got great news!  Rosie's hearing is normal at this point.  We were told to be on the lookout for signs that her ears are bothering her, such as tugging on her ears.  There is a chance that fluid could accumulate and cause hearing loss down the road.  Thankfully, if this does happen, it could be easily fixed by a simple procedure of putting tubes in her ears.

Rosalie sleeping soundly during her hearing test.

All in all, we have been incredibly blessed with a healthy baby girl.  She has been surprising us and exceeding our expectations every step of the way.  We can't wait to see you grow and to see what you can do, Rosie!